Nothing To Lose
by ColieMacKenzie
Summary: This can't be the end; this just cannot be it. AU for episode 3x17, 'Countdown.'
1. I

**Nothing To Lose**

 _AU for 3x17, "Countdown"_

* * *

I

* * *

He hears the words through her phone, despite the deafening blare of city traffic, despite the distance they're standing apart.

' _I can't see anything. I'm sorry.'_ The regret in Fallon's voice, the abject helplessness. _'I'm sorry.'_

Defeat. Surrender.

His heart won't stop racing. This can't be the end; this just cannot be it. Panic is clawing at him, ripping at his heart, tearing apart his ribcage. There's so much… He can't breathe, gulps for air. So much he still wanted to do, experience, so much he's wanted – for her, for them. This can't be it!

0:14. 0:13.

The numbers tick down, glowing red and furious and inevitable, and Castle can't look anymore, tries to swallow past the boulder that's clogging his throat. He turns away instead, turns for her. The woman who's made him come alive, with whom he'd hoped to someday spend his life, the woman he—loves.

Kate.

He loves her, and she's staring back at him, and he knows the desperation is written all over his face; apologies for not being able to save her; sorrow for everything they'll never be.

She looks at him and he marvels at her strength; determination set to her features despite the imminence of their death, as if she's gathered inhuman strength to see both of them through this by sheer willpower. So beautiful in her resolve, with her hair tousled and her cheeks flushed and her chest rising and falling rapidly.

0:10. 0:09.

He aches with it. There's no time to cry, to rage and scream and rattle the cage of this injustice, there's only this, these last few precious desperate too-short seconds, with her.

Castle gathers strength from her tenacity, like he always has. Pushes down the panic and faces the inevitability of their situation, breathing through it, in and out. He feels the blood racing through his veins, hyper-aware of the throbbing in every pulse point, the tingling in his fingertips, of every second as it ticks by. He reaches for her hand because if he's going to die – if he has to die - dying with her is the only way to go. He reaches for her, and she folds her fingers between his, squeezes tightly, and the words well through him, crash over him like a tidal wave, fervent and unstoppable and he doesn't want to stop them because what is there to lose – what does he have to lose by not saying them? If this is _it_ , if it's all over then at least she'll know. She'll know.

"Marry me."

His voice is raspy, raw with desperation. She's looking at him with those wide eyes, that piercing intensity; swirls of color like a nebula. Her lips fall open, no sound in the gasp that falls from her mouth, and he squeezes her hand, means it with every fiber of his being, forlorn and urgent and hopeful in spite of it.

0:06.

"Kate. Marry m-"

"Yes."

It's more breath than voice, shocks him more than the malevolent countdown ticking inevitably next to him. He stares at her, her wide eyes and luscious lips and the sculpted beauty of her face, the wonder of her.

The word echoes between them. He barely knows what he's doing; his heart leaping against his ribs. He doesn't think, doesn't analyze the futility of his action because there's only the whisper of a _yes_ and the screaming of his heart and the glowing amber, 0:03, 0:02; the desperate need to do something, _anything,_ even if it's the last thing he'll do because it can't be over, this _can't_ be it, not for them, not now, and he grabs the thick bundle of wires, his fist tight around all of them–

and yanks.


	2. II

**Nothing To Lose**

 _AU for 3x17, "Countdown"_

* * *

II

* * *

"…and he grabs all the wires, and then he just _yanks_ them." She can still hear it in her voice, that edge of hysteria, the disbelief despite the furious, ecstatic high that she's been riding ever since that countdown cruelly ticked to 0:00 - and stopped.

Adrenaline still rushes through her body; she feels it like the beat of a drum, pounding in her veins, in her ears and neck and fingertips. She can barely recall the details now, the stages of grief as they raced through her mind in those last hysterical seconds: denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. But she remembers that look of absolute, desperate determination on his face just before he yanked on those wires, and how she cried out his name, and how his arms were suddenly around her, crushing her against him, stealing her breath. She remembers his strength bracketing her ribs and the scent of his cologne where her nose was buried against his neck, and the words.

She remembers his words.

' _Marry me.'_

The conversation carries on around her, her coworkers - her _family_ \- surrounding her, proud, joyous smiles stretching their faces and their bodies slouched in office chairs, visibly relieved. She lets herself sink against the sideboard behind her, its hard edge digging into her ass and her fingers white-knuckling the corners because her knees feel weak, as if they won't hold her up for one more second when it hits her all over again how it all could've been over, everything, for this city she loves, for everyone in this room, for all the people she...loves. Her stomach flutters.

"You know the Mayor wants to give you guys a medal. I didn't have the heart to tell him you had no clue what you were doing." Her Captain bellows out a laugh, toasting his beer at them. She still hears the incredulity in his voice that matches her own, the slightly hysterical, overwhelming edge to every emotion as they dash through her mind.

"He's right. You guys don't know how lucky you are." It's Espo who turns quiet then, whose serious thought sobers them, and in the subdued silence that ensues her eyes are drawn back to him, always him.

 _Rick._

His gaze rises to meet hers, holding her captive with those stark blue, infinite pools that make her feel like she's drowning, drowning in him. Her heart is pounding, a fast, incessant rhythm beating against her ribs, her fight or flight response kicking into gear, all parched mouth and jittery limbs, but his quietude seems to cast a spell over her when their eyes meet. He's holding the beer bottle pressed against his bottom lip but he's not drinking, just keeps looking at her with that penetrating stare.

Laugh lines crease the corners of his eyes when his face melts into a soft smile - a smile so personal, so _private,_ that her stomach tightens into a knot. Her cheeks flush with a glowing warmth, the low embers of anticipation blooming in her midsection. She feels shy, overwhelmed and feverish both, breathing through it in a decent facsimile of looking composed.

"Actually, I do." He says, looking straight at her and suddenly she knows, irrevocably knows that he means it.

He wants to _marry_ her.

Her breath stalls in her lungs, her heart pounding against her ribs, throbbing in her throat, a myriad of jumbled, messy emotions vying for her attention. She wants to cling to him and she wants to run away, she wants to curl up in a ball in the corner of her couch and think; she wants to dig her fingers into his dress shirt and drag him close, his lips over hers and his body pressed warm and solid to her own, wants to hang on for dear life.

She doesn't know what to do, doesn't know what she wants.

Does she?

He wants to marry her. And—

She said yes?

In her last moments, with the final seconds of her life ticking by, unstoppable, irrevocable, with nothing and everything to lose—

She said _yes_.


	3. III

**Nothing to Lose**

 _AU for 3x17, "Countdown"_

* * *

III

* * *

"Hell of a day, huh?"

It's the first thing that falls from his mouth when he faces her after Fallon has left. It's inane, can't possibly capture the lunacy, the sheer improbability of everything that's happened to them, between them. Yet it's all he has when he's looking at her, tongue-tied with his galloping heart and his eager, desperate need and the way he misses her, longs for her even while she's standing right here with him, close enough to touch, close enough to drag her into his embrace, feel her lithe and vibrant and _alive_ against him.

It's the first time they're alone with each other – as alone as they can manage while standing just off to the side of the open bull pen, their friends in the adjoining conference room with its long wall of glass offering an unimpeded view for prying eyes.

"Hell of a day." She nods.

It stuns him all over again, just how beautiful she is. It takes his breath, makes his heart stumble; a tingle in his fingertips, his toes. There's a serenity, a peacefulness radiating from her that he can't decipher, doesn't get. How does she manage to be so calm and collected, after everything that's happened? He can't read her at all. Usually he prides himself on how well he knows her, how he can anticipate her reactions, her comments, her thoughts. It makes him nervous, intensifies the flutters in his stomach.

He's alone with Kate at last, after those surreal seconds when the bomb had stopped its ominous end-of-the-world ticking, after she'd fallen into his arms and he'd wrapped her against his body, held her so tight that he could feel her heartbeat against his chest. After he hadn't kissed her when she'd let go of him, hadn't done anything, thrown out of orbit and bounced around by the rush and whirl of adrenaline coursing through his body, hyper and hysterical, shaking with shock. He hadn't kissed her, hadn't mentioned the words he'd spoken. His proposal.

He'd _proposed_ to her, in the most ill-timed, desperate fashion, and she'd said _yes_ , but they didn't talk about it. He's not exactly surprised. They'd kissed not too long ago (sometimes he could still taste her on his lips) and they never talked about it. They almost died, just yesterday, frozen in each other's arms (he still hears the never-finished 'how much I-' playing on a loop in his mind, and what was it she meant to say?) and they never talked about it.

He doesn't know what to do, finds himself at a complete loss. He just stands there, staring at her. Because he can't stop looking at her, can't stop taking her in, tall and indomitable and vulnerable and alive.

He wants to kiss her. Yearns to feel her lips against his, to feel her arms close around him and her fingers in his hair, her soft warmth pressed against his chest. He aches to taste that little sound she makes at the back of her throat. She feels good in his arms; she feels right. Like she belongs there. She _does_ belong there.

"You know, I was thinking..." He swallows, stops, his thoughts racing ahead of him. He wants to ask for things, beg if he must - for a date, for her to come home with him and never leave again, for that yes to mean _yes_ because when all was said and done, she was by his side. She was by his side and he felt like he could face anything. Even death. As long as she was with him, they could conquer the world.

Her smile is gentle, tranquil - a kind of smile he isn't sure he's ever seen on her face, never quite like this.

It gives him hope, strengthens his resolve, the things he wants to say forming into a reliable narrative. He straightens his spine, finds vigor in his certainty.

"I was thinking maybe-" And then the words are caught in his throat, like hard-edged boulders, choking him of air.

It's Josh, striding through the hallway of the precinct toward them.

Shock paralyzes Castle's limbs, roots him to the spot. He— he forgot she has a boyfriend. He _forgot_. He asked Beckett to marry him when- When she has that someone to go home to, someone who gave up Haiti for her, who saved them both from hypothermia. Someone who came back, who dove in with her.

Someone who's not him.

Reality crushes him, makes his limbs feel like lead and his stomach churn with acid. He had allowed himself to hope, to believe— For a few hours he had believed she could be his, that she felt the same. He had hoped beyond reason that Kate had meant him, that she was asking for _him_ , asking for _his_ commitment when she confided about the kind of guy she wanted within the confined space of that claustrophobic isolation tent, the kind with whom to dive into it together.

It must've gotten to his head, the stress, the panic and the fear; his thoughts and hopes and dreams stuck, in limbo until those last, mad seconds together when it just burst from of his mouth, this unpredictable, completely insane thing; the most hopeless thing he's ever asked. He asked her to marry him when he knew better, when he knew there's a Josh.

"I should go home…" he backtracks, gaze sinking to the floor, unmanly tears brimming at his eyes, blurring his vision as he tries to blink them away. He can't look at her, physically aches in her presence, his insides cut, sliced open by the shattered shards of his dreams. Because just for a little while he had believed – and it had felt real.

It hadn't been. None of it was ever real.

"Get some rest. Long day." He tries for a smile, he really tries. For her. The last thing he wants is for Kate to think that anything is wrong because it's okay. She shouldn't feel obligated by his desperate, hopeless love; she doesn't owe him anything. It was a ridiculous thing to say, a fool's errand in an unpredictable, hopeless situation.

Best if they never mention it again. And maybe someday he'll get over it. Her.

He has to turn away before Josh reaches her. He strides toward the elevator, and he doesn't look back.


	4. IV

**Nothing to Lose**

 _AU for 3x17, 'Countdown'_

* * *

IV

* * *

"Did you mean it?"

She blurts out the question before the door has even fully opened, slightly appalled by the edge of desperation that gives her voice a harsh bite. Already she's getting this all wrong.

It's not what she's been wanting to say, not how she hoped to start this conversation, yet it's the only thing that's kept revolving in her mind, like a record player with its needle stuck, over and over and over. While she'd crossed through the city, the rush hour traffic wreaking havoc on her nerves, more stop than go while she had to sit idle in the backseat of a cab with her racing heart and the tempestuous whirl of her thoughts. When all she'd wanted, needed was to _move_ , to just get there. To him.

He's staring at her, eyes hardened like diamonds and his jaw set, an immovable presence in his doorway.

"I meant every word."

He's serious, so serious, and her heart, her poor mangled heart keeps fluttering, the wonder of it warring with the nervous jitters in her stomach.

He meant it. He wants to-

"Then why did you-?" _Leave?_ She snaps her mouth closed around the word, swallowing hard. She can't complete the question. She knows why. What else could he have done, given the circumstances? Castle is, above all, an honorable man, despite the playboy act he used to put on display. Kate knows he wouldn't have stayed, wouldn't have asked anything of her once the other man, her _boyfriend_ , had shown up.

She gulps around the knot in her throat, waves it off. "Forget it- Can I... May I come in?"

He gestures for her to enter, his face still that stony mask she can't read. She steps inside, into his space. It smells like him, so familiar, weakens her knees a little, makes her stomach flutter. The fireplace crackles and sizzles, and she feels alert to every whisper and sigh in the vast space of his home, the creak of the wood floor beneath her soles and the quiet hum of the heating, the susurrus of his breathing, the finality of the door clicking shut behind her.

She paces, fingers knitted together so tightly that her knuckles turn white, staring at his flooring but then she gathers what strength she has left. It's up to her now, to fix this. Kate turns for him, fingers knotted, her insides knotted, her thoughts knotted; a tangled mess. But she needs to see him, wants to remember this moment until they're eighty and decrepit, with white hair and decades' worth of memories.

This is insane, by all standards of _normal_ adult human behavior and yet – after a bomb that should've incinerated them, and almost freezing to death in the cradle of his arms with the barely-warm whisper of his breath against her icy ear, after every moment spent together, after almost dying twice (or was it three times? She doesn't even know any longer), after that kiss, that amazing, toe-curling kiss she usually has to censor herself not to think about – after everything they've been through, _together,_ it's like nothing has ever been more right before.

Their eyes meet, and then she does the one thing she's yearned to do since he'd ripped those wires and crushed her against his chest, the only thing she should've done. She leaps for him, frames his face within her palms, and she kisses him. His lips are soft against hers, surprise melting into a moan as he opens for her, his brittleness dissolving into movement as his arms rise to wrap around her, bracing her lower back, her shoulders, fingers tangling in the mess of her hair. Her tongue meets his in an almost languid caress, less fiery and frantic than she would've expected; soft, sweeter, more aching than she can bear.

"Kate." He murmurs against her mouth, his large palm still cradling her neck, fingers warm against her skin, holding her in place, holding her close. "What about Josh?"

"On his way to Haiti." She can feel her strength returning, the conviction that's been rising within her breaking through, fortifying her.

"You broke up?"

"Of course I did." She'd been just as shocked when Josh had shown up at the precinct, startled by his sudden presence; that deer-in-the-headlights moment where she stood unable to move, didn't know what to say, what to do. Despite the fact that Josh had chosen to remain in New York, had come to help rescue them from hypothermia, she had completely forgotten about him. He was her boyfriend, and in her last seconds on Earth, in the moments before what could've been her death, he hadn't once entered her mind. She hadn't been fair, least of all to him.

"Why?"

"Because…" She takes a deep breath, feels brave and rattled both. It seems so obvious now, after everything that's happened.

"Because you asked me to marry you. And I said yes."

He is still looking at her, asking questions with his eyes. She can see his uncertainty, the lingering doubts, and she can't blame him. Of course it's not obvious to him. He needs to hear the words. He deserves her words. And she knows she wants to gift them to him, to ensure he knows she's walking into this with her eyes – and her heart – wide open.

She presses herself even closer, finds his fingers with her left hand, coiling them together, squeezing, raising their fists so they rest, knotted together, inseparable, between their heartbeats.

"And I _meant_ it."

"You... You want to-." Disbelief makes his voice sound rough, surprised shock causing him to stutter, but she hears it anyway, the hope laced through the confusion. "Why?"

"Because I love you." It tumbles from her mouth, stark and shocking in its truth yet it's the only thing she can make sense of within that whirl of convoluted feelings that had accompanied her for the past hours.

"You…" He sounds breathless, startled speechless, and she forges forward. _Words, Kate, use your words._

"Remember what I told you when we were stuck in isolation together?"

He nods. "I remember."

Kate tightens her hold on his hand, knuckles crushed together, runs her other hand through her hair in frustration when her thoughts still refuse to knit into any kind of logical narrative, making her stumble over the words.

"Today made me realize that the answers I'd been seeking were already there, right in front of me. You. In our last moments, in what could've been the very last seconds of our life, you were there. For me, _with_ me. You dove in with me – no matter the consequences, or the futility of it all. I was devastated, and I was so scared. I didn't want to die! And I was heartbroken, believing that Alexis would have to grow up without her parent, would have to go through the same thing I went through and there was no way I could fix it. Yet in the end, in my most selfish thoughts I realized that I was glad you were there. That if we had to die, if this was it, I was _relieved_ we were together. That there is no one else I'd rather have by my side than you. I just want you."

She's breathing heavily, her thoughts whirling and her mind emotionally drained when his mouth seals over hers, his lips urgent and demanding. He kisses her and her knees actually buckle; her arms wrap around his neck of their own volition, her body pressing against the strength of his, stretched up on her toes.

His arm tightens around her waist, half lifting her off the ground as he deepens the kiss, tongue gliding into her mouth. She whimpers, sinking against him, tasting him for only the third time in her life and yet nothing had ever been as right, as perfect before. She hears a moan, realizes it came from her as she clings to him with what little fortitude she has left.

"Castle," she murmurs into his mouth, the exhaustion of the past days, the last few hours, minutes, the complete _relief_ crashing over her like a wave, trying to drag her under but she ignores it, ignores everything but the intoxicating, revitalizing power of his arms around her. The scent of his skin, the feel of it beneath her fingertips; the flavor of his kisses, kisses she couldn't allow herself to dream about for weeks since she'd gotten her first taste of him under the guise of a ruse. The realization how crazy all this is, how absolutely insane.

How perfect, how wonderfully right.

"You're really going to marry me?" He presses out between kisses, his words a hum against her lips. Still disbelieving and stunned and yet there's joy in his voice now, delight sparkling in his eyes.

"Yeah. I'm really going to marry you." She twirls her hand through his hair, feeling the soft strands run like caresses between her fingers, her other hand cradling his jaw, thumb stroking over his bottom lip. "Think you can handle that?"

"I can handle anything, as long as it's with you." She smiles and he kisses her, once, twice. "Well, maybe fewer bombs. And freezers. We could skip the serial killers, too. And-"

She's the one to kiss him this time. "Shut up, Castle," she whispers against his lips, deepening their kiss, letting herself sink into the worship of his mouth until breathing becomes a necessity. "It's going to be okay, right?"

"Kate." He brushes his thumb over her cheekbone and the corner of her mouth. "It's going to be great."

She smiles against his lips, her teeth and tongue playing his bottom lip skillfully. "You have no idea…," she winks impishly. "Yet."

He trembles at the assault of her mouth, eyes stark with arousal when he looks at her, tightens his arms around her, holding her close, so close. She hopes he'll never let go again.

"Good thing we'll have our whole lives to find out."

 _END_

* * *

 _a/n: Thank you all for reading, and your wonderful comments and enthusiasm. I appreciate every one of you. A great big tackle hug to Meg for her editing prowess - you polished this from dull to shine! Thank you!_


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